I wondered what he meant for a moment, then I said: "Oh, you mean when the boat started to sink. I didn't have time to consider very much. I thought I saw what looked like a few grains of it on the bottom of the boat where it hadn't, at that time, been touched by the water. And then as the water swelled up there seemed to be some grains floating in it. I was too upset though to think much about it. It just flashed into my mind. You understand. It was a horrible moment, Slack."
His brow was furrowed. "Sugar takes a little time to dissolve in cold water. Now salt would dissolve quicker."
"How could it have been sugar? How could that have got there?"
"Couldn't have got there if it hadn't been put, Miss Ellen."
"Slack, what do you mean!"
"Where be the boat? If we had the boat and her weren't broken up."
"You wouldn't find the sugar now."
"No, but we'd see the hole it come through."
"We know that must have been there."
"But how did it come to be there? That be what I want to know."
"Slack, what are you thinking?"
"What if the hole were put there by someone as filled it with sugar? There's the Demerara kind... brown and coarse grained, the kind that takes time to dissolve... specially in cold salt water. I've heard it said hereabouts more than once that it would hold a leak for a while if you happened to be not too far out to sea and supposing you had a packet of such with you... which is hardly likely." His eyes shone with the intensity of his feelings. "You wouldn't see it when you started out and when it did dissolve you have a hole, don't 'ee, what the sugar was bunging up. And the water could get in, couldn't it, where it couldn't when you started out."
"You're suggesting that someone ..."
"I don't rightly know what I mean, but terrible things can happen. I do know that. It don't do to forget it. I reckon we don't want to laugh at it and say ..." He floundered and tapped his head, implying that I might be thinking as others did that he was "not all there."
What he was suggesting seemed absurd. Did he really think that someone had tampered with the boat—my boat, which no one took out but me—knowing that sooner or later I should be at sea in it... and almost certainly alone!
It was too farfetched. Who would possibly do such a thing!
Gwennol was jealous because Michael Hydrock had been friendly towards me. Jenifry was angry on her daughter's account. I had always felt uneasy about Jenifry since that first night. I had often laughed at myself about that. Just because her reflection in an old mirror had looked momentarily malevolent I had started to endow her with all sorts of sinister motives. And now of course there was this aspect of my friendship with Michael Hydrock. But no. It was too flimsy. It was not as though Michael had asked me to marry him and I had accepted. I could understand that there would have been acute jealousy then. But it was not so. I liked him and it was quite obvious that he liked me. He was just a very courteous and kindly gentleman who had been helpful and hospitable. Gwennol had no reason to be jealous on my account.
And yet our relationship had changed since she had discovered that I had met him before I came to the Island. She had been prepared to be very friendly before that discovery; now she was cautious as though she were trying to trap me into admissions. I imagined that every time I went out she wondered whether I was going to meet Michael Hydrock. As for Jenifry, she had no doubt set her heart on Michael as a son-in-law and indeed he was undoubtedly the most desirable party in the neighborhood—a man any mother might have been expected to want for her daughter.
So this matter of the sugar was the wildest conjecture and I wished I hadn't mentioned it to Slack.
"You must be careful, Miss Ellen," he said very seriously.
"I shall. I shall examine any boat thoroughly before I attempt to go out in it."
"Mightn't be a boat next time."
"Next time?"
"I don't know what put that in me mouth, Miss Ellen. I want to look after 'ee, you see ... like I looked after Miss Silva."
"How did you look after her?"
He smiled slowly. "She always come to me. She used to get fits, Miss Ellen. Oh, not so she'd lie down and do damage to herself... not they sort of fits. Fits of sadness and fits of wildness when she wanted to do things that would hurt herself. Then she'd come and talk to me and the Powers would show me how to soothe her."
"You must have known as much about her as anybody did."
"Reckon so."
"And that night when she went away. ... It was a stormy night and yet she took a boat and tried to cross to the mainland."
I saw the shutter come down.
" Tis something all marveled at," he agreed.
"Did you know she was going?"
He hesitated, then he said: "Yes, I knew she were going."
"Why didn't you try to stop her? You must have known the chances were against her reaching land safely."
" 'Tweren't no good trying to stop Miss Silva when she were set on doing something. Her were like a wild pony. There were no reasoning with her."
"Something must have happened to make her want to leave so hurriedly."
"Twere so."
"What, Slack? You must know."
He was silent for a moment.
"She was my sister," I went on. "Just think of that. We had the same father, though different mothers. We should have been brought up together."
"Her weren't like you, Miss Ellen. There couldn't have been two ladies who was so different."
"I certainly wouldn't have gone out to sea on a stormy night."
"Her came to me afore her left. She fed the pigeons with me just as you be doing now. Fluttering round us they were, making their lovely cooing noises, and she said to me: 'Slack, I be going away. I be going to some place where I'll be happy as I never could be here.'"
"Oh Slack, do you think that she was so unhappy that she deliberately went out like that?"
He was thoughtful. "Her gave me something, Miss Ellen. Her said: 'Keep these, Slack. Someone might want them someday. Perhaps I will myself if it don't all go according to plan.'"
"What did she give you?"
"I'll show 'ee."
He took me into the outhouse and in the cupboard there was a box. He took a key from his pocket and opened it. Inside were two notebooks—exercise books like the one I had found in the desk.
A great excitement seized me. Could it be that these exercise books held the clue to Silva's disappearance? I held out my hand but Slack was regarding me in a puzzled fashion.
"I were to hold 'em," he said.
"And not show them to anyone?"
"Her didn't quite say that."
"Have you read them?"
He shook his head. "They be too much for me, Miss Ellen. I can read only little words. Her was frightened... frightened of someone in the castle. I reckon it's in here."
"Slack," I begged, "let me read them."
"I been pondering," he said. "I have said: 'Show 'em to Miss Ellen.' And I'll tell 'ee this, I've been on the point of doing that time and time again. Then when you said about the sugar it was as though Miss Silva spoke to me. 'Let her read 'em, Slack. Might be they'll be of help to her.'"
He put the books into my hands.
"I shall go to my room and read them immediately," I said. "Thank you, Slack."
"I hope I be doing right," he said uneasily.
"I shall never forget what might have happened to me but for you," I told him earnestly.
"Master Jago were there, were he not? He just happened to be there. I be mighty glad I were there too."
I did not think about what he meant by that until later. I was so excited about the exercise books, and lost no time in going to my room and shutting myself in there.
It was still the same scrawly untidy handwriting though a little more mature than that in the first exercise book.